° Armourdillo Instropectives °

Counseling & Consulting

— For Individuals —

Armourdillo // Counseling

Inquiry through A Systems Lens

offer for counseling (uncertified)

During a systems modelling session of about 45–90 minutes I offer space for inquiry into What inspires you? And How do you best follow this inspiration in action steps? It can be seen as a very focussed brainstorming session with a focus on seeing the interrelationships of the actors and actions in the field of interest.

We look at the elements that enable you to reach your goal, possible pathways, actions steps. But also we will inquire dynamics in the system that may keep you from reaching your goal.

While listening openly I will offer you different lenses for framing and contextualizing your goal.

“The Art of Inquiry in times of Multi-Purpose Humans”

LENSES that I operate with:

EFFECTS ACROSS SYSTEMS:

What is your purpose in different contexts and what may be effects on other systems of higher or lower order:
the ecology and the social systems and a personal-scale, community-level and in the world at large?

ADAPTIVE CYCLE:

In what part of the adaptive cycle are you now (organization, growth, conservation, chaos)?

In what part of the adaptive cycle is your goal located in ((re)organizing, growing, conserving, breaking down into chaos and renewal)?

ENERGY:

Where does your energy come from – what provides you energy?
Where would you like to give your energy to?

RESILIENCE:

How do you create resilience within and around you?

BOOK A SESSION

If you are curious, please send me an email and we can make an appointment. Sessions can be online via Zoom. If you leave in or near Nanaimo (Vancouver Island) I can offer in-person sessions, too.

BASED ON THE GIFT ECONOMY

In the spirit of the Gift Economy this session is offered on a basis of trusting that the energy exchange will find its way depending on the setup and agreement we make. However, from experience I have seen that free offers are often not taken as seriously and end up being spontaneously discarded, as they are lower in committment. To make it accessible to anyone in need I offer a sliding scale from FREE — 120€/session. I am also open to bartering services and goods. I hold deep appreciation for exchange offers as it provides opportunity for an inquiry into one’s own gifts and resources.

For estimating what you would like to give it may be helpful to you to consider the parameters of your financial (st)ability and resonance with the process or appreciation for the outcome.

If you cannot offer anything in return you are still loved and welcome.

— For Businesses and Organizations —

Armourdillo // Consulting

Working with the systems in place

When to contact Armourdillo for Consulting:

• — Your organization is stuck or in need of re-alignment

• — You are not meeting your goals with the current process

• — You are in the beginning of your innovation project tackling a relevant issue that affects social and ecological well-being and you are looking for direction on how to address the issue

Maybe you are sensing a tension coming from within or from outside your organization that keeps coming knocking a need for innovation and renewal?

Offer to faclitate:

—> emergence of Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships

—> Integration of different perspectives within an organization

Working with interviews and systems models will uncover leverage points for how to move the system into a healthier direction.

Where does this ‘Armourdillo approach’ come from?

I learned the method of solution-oriented inquiry using live-prototyping of systems models from Christoph Hinske during his Systems Leadership Module within my Master’s Program Global Change Management MSC. Since June 2020 I have been practicing this method in order to apply it for my research project on How to implement water-free sanitation solutions.

During regular practice sessions we noticed how valuable this focussed time is for us to thoroughly look at a problem that we are either direct or intermediate actors in, and understand its complexity of relationships.

 — Applied as a Research Method —

SystemS Modelling through Interviews and Live-modelling

A visual road map for doing transformative research through semi-structured stakeholder interviews with live-prototyping system models (aka causal loop diagrams) and presenting them to the interview participants.

Models are created during the interview, then refined by the researcher and presented for validation to the participant. In the end all the individual models are merged into one big model, which is presented to the group of stakeholders as a basis for a dialog around the vision. The guiding question is “From your personal perspective, what does it take to reach vision XYZ?” – the answers include action steps and obstacles, which are represented as scalable variables and are connected with arrows according to their causal relationships. This construct of variables reveals feedbackloops and relationships within the system to the stakeholders as they are being interviewed and later one as the model is presented to them for validation.

Often interviewees find this process interesting themselves and feel seen as the researcher takes notes and reflects what is heard in a very focussed way.